A new approach of gastric motility measurement and evaluation by bioimpedance

Abstract

A new approach of gastric motility measurement and evaluation has been developed. In order to investigate the complex course of gastric motility, including its rhythm, transmission, gastric emptying and the influences of them, it is neccesery to extract gastric motility information of both electrical and mechanical activity. The approach combines bioimpedance method with synchronous EGG. Both signals IGM and EGG collected from body surface are decomposed by Multi-resolution Analysis. Wavelet transform is addressed to separate the IGM signal from breath and heart activity signals. By the means of energy and freqency spectrum analysis technic, the signals can be classified according to the dominant power and dominant frequency. Some indexes such as rhythms of EGG and IGM, signal power spectrum and dynamic spectrum, the rates of rhythm and power for the normal EGG and IGM and son on,can also be calculated. The primary experiments of gastric motility measurement and evaluation are executed including the gastric emptying measurement, compare tests of gastric motility activity for different period of time. The results of the experiments show that the method can provide a non-invasive way to investigate and evaluate gastric motility situation corresponding gastrointestinal physiology and pathology conditions. © Springer-Verlag 2007.